This Mike Tyson Interview With Earl Sweatshirt Is Incredible

This Mike Tyson Interview With Earl Sweatshirt Is Incredible

The pairing of artist Earl Sweatshirt and legendary boxer Mike Tyson resulted in a great interview to say the least. Given the opportunity to sit with the former Heavyweight champ, the two discussed everything from The Notebook, spirituality, Earl’s future with Odd Future, and revealed the personal backstories of both.

Regarding Earl’s history with Odd Future:

Mike: Tell me about you man, who you are, what’s your shtick, man.

Earl: I do music. So I came –

Mike: Like songs and stuff, records and radio and stuff?

Earl: Not so much radio. I was fortunate enough to – we like developed our own, like self-sustaining like fan base that was separate. So when I was like 14, I was getting better at rapping, like running around L.A., trying to find like people to do music with. And I linked up with this dude Tyler. And he had this whole thing going on already. We started making music, and it was like, it was idiot music, but it was really, I think, what we had in hindsight, what attracted so many people to it was potential. Like we weren’t necessarily talking about anything, but the way that the music was, it was like sophisticated in a sense for our age. So anyways, we’re doing that.

Mike: What’s the name of your music?

Earl: The group that I was in was called Odd Future. So we was doing that. Fast forward, 2010, so I want to say that was like 2008 to 2010. Mid 2010, I got sent away. And we blew up. Like at that moment, it was like hand in hand. I got sent away, and –

Mike: Tell me what you mean by “blow up”. I know what blowing up means but how did you experience—define “blowing up”. You got signed? They played your music?

Earl: Yeah, they started… but it wasn’t even so much, that they played our music on the radio, it was –

Mike: Clubs?

Earl: It was like – it was almost punk rock in the way that it took off. It was just kids became, like, obsessed with it..

Speaking about The Notebook:

Mike: There’s nothing to fear but fear itself. It’s an illusion of fear. Fear is an illusion. If you gonna die, you gonna die anyway; it’s not something to fear, fear is not gonna help.

It’s going to be over soon. Somebody’s going to die, or somebody’s going to get sick, someone might leave. It’s not going to last forever. You know, it’s going to be over soon. You know, the thought of that never enters my mind. This is the reality of life. I watched that movie The Notebook. You ever watched that?

Earl: I haven’t watched it.

Mike: Ah, young man, I don’t even know if you understand that stage of life yet. Very interesting thing about that movie, very interesting, it’s one of the movies that makes me really vulnerable. It makes me very vulnerable, because you work so hard for something and you don’t want to let it go.